Friday, December 18, 2015

Preparing for St. Nicholas Day...




Today is the eve of the feast day of St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia. We are so excited about this feast day in our family because not only do we love St. Nicholas, but it is also the day my husband was ordained to deacon. It is also his namesday.

Growing up we did not have a particular St. Nicholas day tradition in our home, (aside from going to church of course), but when I married my husband and we had a baby, he insisted we begin putting our shoes out for St. Nicholas each year. I have grown to love this tradition so much, and today the kids share in the excitement.

I would have loved to bake some nice St. Nicholas cookies to leave out for St. Nicholas tonight, but I am 33 weeks pregnant, and it is hard for me to do much of anything ambitious these days. And so, I am keeping things simple this year.

The first thing we have done today to prepare for this feast day is to watch a short video in Russian about the saint, made just for kids. (If you are interested, the link can be found here).

And then, I printed out a coloring icon page from an OCA website which I have come to find very handy! My son loves coloring and drawing, so he is the only one I give this to. My girls do a lot more scribbling, which I don't prefer for an icon page.

I ordered this book on Amazon a few weeks ago and have been looking through the beautiful illustrations. I am not sure if my kids are old enough to sit through the entire book yet, but I will definitely look through it with them tonight before bedtime. In addition to our shoes, we will leave out the St. Nicholas icon we have. I am so excited!

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